Marketing Words Copywriting Blog

I’ve seen it all over the ‘Net lately.  Website owners that resell products or services are completely missing the point and they are losing sales as a result.  What’s their tragic error?  Strictly promoting the company they resell for and neglecting themselves.

For instance, when doing a copywriting review for a client who is a reseller for a notable home security company, I noticed the copy only addressed the security company and not the reseller.  Then, when reading a case study on Marketing Experiments (one of my favorite sites!), I saw the same thing.  A reseller of knives only had copy that dealt with that particular brand of knives.  There was nothing about the reseller.

“Why is this important?” you might ask.  Because I - as a customer - need help to decide which reseller to buy from.  Yes, the entire collection of knives your online store carries might be a duplicate of the knives another reseller stocks, but that still leaves a very important question for the shopper.  “Why should I buy from your site instead of the 962 other authorized Swiss Army Knife resellers online?”

Do you have a good answer?  If not, you’d better come up with one and quick!

In my previously written article, Making It Easy for Customers to Choose You,  I give several ideas for developing differentiating factors for your company.

Before you get lost in a sea of click-happy surfers, take some time to figure out why you are different and/or better than the competition.  Then make that perfectly clear in your copy so your visitors will have an easy time identifying you as the perfect place to buy.

Copy not converting or ranking like it should? Learn to write exceptional, natural-sounding SEO copy when you take Karon’s self-paced copywriting course.  Get details at http://www.copywritingcourse.com.

By Karon Thackston © 2008

From the early days of search engine optimization, keywords and content have always been vital to achieving your goals. Starting back in the days when we used to shove every slightly relevant keyword into our META tags, it has been obvious that search engines love text. The more complex and sophisticated the engines have gotten over the years, the more complex and sophisticated many writers have gotten with their search engine copywriting.

Supposed formulas, saturation levels, and other mysterious concoctions have been developed to help us outsmart the engines. What we should have been doing all along was writing for the visitor first and the engines second. Why? Because creating a site that’s loved by visitors has become a prime factor in linking, ranking, and marketing as a whole. And now it has become vital to search engine copywriting. Especially now as the engines are making great strides with more personalized and efficient searches (such as semantic search).

The ironic thing is, as the search engines get more complex the “formula” for SEO copywriting is getting simpler and simpler.

Write Naturally

Rather than working yourself into a tizzy about how many keyphrases go where and what percentage of your words are keyphrases… relax. As SEO gets more advanced your copywriting plan needs to get more elementary.

Are keyphrases being shoved in wherever possible? Does the copy sound fake, unnatural, and stiff? Then you haven’t done your job as an SEO copywriter.

Want an example of unnatural copy? Take a look at this lovely piece I found while surfing just the other day. (I’ve replaced the keyphrases used in the original copy with the word “wherever” so as not to embarrass the site owner.)

Wherever Holiday Rentals

Holiday rentals in Wherever for holidays in Wherever

Wherever holiday rentals directly from the owners. Rent a holiday villa in Wherever or perhaps a 2-6 bedroom apartment in Wherever. Wherever vacation rentals for holidays in Wherever are easily located by searching the Wherever Holiday website. Wherever Holiday Rentals offer holiday apartments in Wherever and holiday villas.

Find accommodation in Wherever by clicking on the Wherever map or the active links. You will then see holiday rental apartments, villas and townhouses in stunning Wherever accommodation.

Let’s suppose someone walked into your brick and mortar travel agency and asked for help. You would most likely ask what the person was looking for. They would reply, “Holiday rentals in Wherever. What can you show me?” Would you honestly take off on the spiel above? Can you see yourself talking to a real client face-to-face and saying, “We offer Wherever holiday rentals in Wherever and can find you many apartments, villas, and houses in Wherever”? I don’t think so.

Who Cares?

Writing using natural language has always been important to your visitors. If your site sounds silly due to over use of keyphrases, you lower yourself in the view of your prospective clients. You want to make sure your visitors are smiling and not rolling their eyes after they read your copy. Otherwise you greatly reduce the chance of making sales.

Now that the engines are becoming more and more sensitive to natural language when dealing with copywriting, this element is going to become very important for another reason… rankings. To write in a natural-sounding way and still incorporate keyphrases, you’ve got to have some clever tactics up your sleeve.

Tips for Writing in Natural Language

1) Vary your keywords/phrases. For example, if a keyphrase you particularly want to target is “14k gold jewelry” also consider researching keyphrases like “14k gold watches” or “gold wedding bands” or others along those lines. This will give you a variety of phrases within your copy.

2) Read it out loud. When you read your copy out loud you’ll get a better sense of whether it sounds unnatural. If you wouldn’t say, “We make 14k gold jewelry and have made 14k gold jewelry for 10 years. If you need 14k gold jewelry just view our 14k gold jewelry catalog” out loud then don’t put it in your copy, either.

3) Break up keyphrases. As searchers get more knowledgeable about finding what they want in the engines, they use longer and longer search queries some of which just don’t make any sense. For instance, I recently had to use the phrase “real estate Pittsburg downtown.” Since this search string was not easily worked in as that exact phrase, I broke it up. One sentence I used it in read, “When looking for commercial real estate in Pittsburg check the downtown listings first for exceptional locations and prices.” The words are still in the same order with minor breaks in between. When you can’t use a phrase “as is,” this is a very viable alternative.

The closer you can get to writing in natural language, the better off you’ll be. It only makes sense to create a site now that will last through the long haul. Especially when that site will have a better chance of favorably appealing to the engines and your visitors.

Karon Thackston is author of “Writing With Keywords” a keyword copywriting ebook with 11 clever tactics for writing more natural SEO copy with a perfect balance of keywords and natural language at http://www.writingwithkeywords.com.

By Karon Thackston © 2008, All Rights Reserved

Yesterday, I received an email from someone who’d purchased one of my ebooks. Her question was one I’ve been asked several times before: “How many instances of keywords within the copy are enough?” That’s like asking, “How long is a piece of string?” There isn’t one answer.

Proponents of keyword density formulas will quickly spout out a percentage: 4%, 6%, 12%. However, I wonder where they get these figures from. If you do a search in Google for any keyphrase (say [cast iron frying pan], for example), you’ll immediately see why keyword density formulas don’t add up. Either version - cast iron or cast-iron - bring the same listings on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Please note: I was looking at the source code for each page so as to include mentions in tags as well as on the page.

Cast Iron Frying Pan

Your results may be different than what I see, as everybody does not view results from the same database. But, when I type in [cast iron frying pan] (no brackets, of course), the first site that comes up is http://whatscookingamerica.net/Information/CastIronPans.htm. Total word count: about 1,611. Keyword density for [cast iron frying pan]: 0%. Keyword density for [cast iron]: 3%. Keyword density for [frying pan]: < 1%.

Next up, Ask Yahoo: http://ask.yahoo.com/20000419.html. Total word count: about 622. Keyword density for [cast iron frying pan]: < 1%. Keyword density for [cast iron]: < 1%. Keyword density for [frying pan]: < 1%.

In the #3 position is Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Lodge-Logic-Pre-Seasoned-Cast-Iron-Skillet/dp/B00063RWUM. Total word count: about 2,405. Keyword density for [cast iron frying pan]: < 1%. Keyword density for [cast iron]: < 1%. Keyword density for [frying pan]: < 1%.

Mexico Cruise Vacation

Here’s another example: [Mexico cruise vacation]. At #1 we see Cruise Web, http://www.cruiseweb.com/MEXICO.HTM. Total word count: about 488. Keyword density for [Mexico cruise vacation]: < 1%. Keyword density for [Mexico cruise]: < 1%. Keyword density for [cruise vacation]: < 1%.

eCruises.com is up next with their page found at http://www.ecruises.com/. Total word count: about 238. Keyword density for [Mexico cruise vacation]: < 1%. Keyword density for [Mexico cruise]: < 1%. Keyword density for [cruise vacation]: 0%.

It goes on and on. Yes, you do find some sites that have really high keyword densities, but it is not a given that attaining a certain across-the-board keyword density will guarantee you good success. In fact, from what I’ve seen, keyword density has not been a valid measure of SEO copywriting success in years. I believe it once was, but Google and other engines quickly plugged the loophole.

Does Frequency Not Count At All?

Does that mean that engines don’t give any consideration to how often keyphrases are used within the copy? No. In fact, The Official Google Blog recently did a series entitled Technologies Behind Google Ranking. In one of the posts, the author states, “The core technology in our ranking system comes from the academic field of Information Retrieval (IR). The IR community has studied search for almost 50 years. It uses statistical signals of word salience, like word frequency, to rank pages.” He continues with, “IR gave us a solid foundation, and we have built a tremendous system on top using links, page structure, and many other such innovations.”

Other Google documents make mention of the need to include key terms in your copy, so it is established that keywords in copy can play an important role. However, I do not see evidence that a standard, across-the-board “keyword density” is at play. Not to mention, forcing phrases into your page text to the point that it sounds utterly stupid makes no sense. It’s not going to help your rankings (except maybe on some sub-engines), and it will almost certainly turn off your site visitors.

So, back to the original question: “How many keyphrases are enough?” That’s a judgment call that comes with experience. Here are a few guidelines - not carved-in-stone rules - but guidelines you can consider. And no, don’t do them all every time.

Keyword Inclusion Guidelines

1) I make an effort to include keyphrase(s) in the headlines and sub-heads if at all possible.

2) Adding keyphrases about once or twice per paragraph is a good goal. I never count words or run keyword density percentages.

3) Focus on writing in natural language. Yes, you want to incorporate keywords, but not to the point that you ruin your copy. It should sound natural.

4) Read your copy out loud. If it sounds stupid or redundant to you, it will sound stupid and redundant to your site visitor.

5) If it makes sense to do so, I try to include keyphrase(s) in bold, italic, bulleted lists, or in other text that is specially formatted. If you wouldn’t bold or italicize the words or phrases to emphasize them to your visitors, however, don’t make a special exception for the engines. These are what I call Brownie point tactics. The impact won’t be significant, but every little bit helps.

Bottom line? Don’t sacrifice the quality and conversion power of your copy to chase search engine rabbits. In the end, it won’t be worth it.

How do you put enough keywords into your copy without it sounding ridiculous? By using the 11 clever techniques in Karon’s ebook Writing With Keywords. Get the 4th edition available now at http://www.writingwithkeywords.com.

I just got an email from the headquarters of Marketing Sherpa. They are moving and - to lighten their load - they are offering 30% off on their famous handbooks — but only for 72 hours. See the official announcement below.

===========================

MarketingSherpa has BIG news: we are moving to new, larger offices this month!
Our need for more space creates a special sales opportunity:

For the next 72 hours (starting at 8 am EST on 8/13 ) your readers get a 30% discount on ANY MarketingSherpa Report, Handbook or Guide. There are no order limits.

Here are a list of our hottest sellers in 2008:

- B-to-B Lead Generation Handbook
http://www.sherpastore.com/b2bhandbook08.html?1097

- 2008 Landing Page Handbook
http://www.Sherpastore.com/LandingPageHBaudit.html?1097

NOTE: You can read my review of this product for more info.

- 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide
http://www.Sherpastore.com/SearchMarketingbmg09.html?1097

- 2008 The Online Advertising Handbook + Benchmarks
http://www.sherpastore.com/onlinead08.html?1097

- 2008 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide (only 12 copies left)
http://www.sherpastore.com/EmailBenchmarkGuide08-newbutton.html?1097

I hate when I get emails like this.  This particular message was asking for a quote on SEO copywriting.  Here’s their “criteria”:

Criteria for the text:
1. Text density: 6 %
2. “Post resume” should will repeat not less than 30 times.

You gotta be kidding me, right?  I immediately emailed the man back, thanked him for the opportunity and told him I’d decline to bid.

Can you just image what a web page of about 350-500 words would sound like if it had the same phrase repeated “not less than 30 times”?  It would sound like a bunch of garbled, repetitive trash.

Copy that ranks high does not - I repeat - does NOT have to follow such “criteria.”  Copy that ranks high does not have to sound like a 10 year old wrote it.  It’s not about volume.  It’s not about how many times you can shove a keyphrase into a page.

This is what gives SEO copywriting a bad name.

Want to learn how to use creativity and style in your keyword copywriting?  Get Karon’s ebook Writing With Keywords.  Simple, clever, legal tactics for writing pages that rank high and still sound natural.